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The building sector consumes most energy in the world, especially public buildings, which normally have high energy-use intensity. This phenomenon indicates that the energy-efficiency retrofit (EER) for public buildings is essential for energy saving. Incentive policies have been emphasized by governments in recent years, but their effectiveness has not been sufficient. A major reason is agency problems in EER and that the government and building owners have asymmetric information. Furthermore, most policies apply identical standard to existing buildings of different types, resulting in resistance from owners and tenants. To mitigate this issue, this study proposes a principal&ndash ; agent model to optimize incentive policy in EER. The proposed model defines two pairs of principal&ndash ; agent relations (i.e., the government-owner and owner-tenant) and models their behaviors under different scenarios as per principal&ndash ; agent theory. The results indicate the optimal incentive policies for different scenarios. In addition, critical factors of policy making, such as cost, risk, uncertainty, and benefit distribution are discussed. This study has implications for policy that will benefit policy makers, particularly in promoting EER by mitigating the agency problem found for the different scenarios.

It is commonly accepted that members of Congress influence federal agencies informally, and that in turn the federal agencies strategically accommodate members of Congress. However, in recent years allegations of accommodation of congressional interests by federal agencies has been met with some skepticism. In this study I frame a critical test of the informal gains of U.S. House subcommittee members and leaders against that of substantive policy criteria in the awarding of distributive grants, specifically with respect to the Title I public works program of the Economic Development Administration during the period from 1978 to 1982. Utilizing a multinomial probit model of grant distributions to House members' districts, I find no substan tively strong or statistically significant "political benefits" for subcommittee members. However, subcommittee leaders are found to receive political benefits only during the critical test, and only enough to return the flow of grants to that which prevailed before the critical period.

ObjectiveThis study advances the presidential primary literature in two ways. First, since many studies in this literature advocate for more detailed theoretical development, we incorporate an interdisciplinary approach by utilizing social contagion theory from the field of sociology. Second, presidential primaries do not adequately explore what role the public plays during the invisible primary. We thus incorporate Google Trends data into presidential primary models to account for the relative amount of public attention for each presidential primary candidate.MethodsWe use fixed effects regression to determine the impact of public attention on a candidate's share of the contested primary vote (CPV).ResultsWe find that increased public attention leads to higher levels of support for a candidate in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, and CPV.ConclusionThese findings illustrate the extra‐voting role the public plays in presidential primary elections and helps us further distinguish how party elites, voters, and candidates uniquely determine the selection of our executive.

International audience ; Since its initial formulation in 1988, the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model (PM) has become one of the most widely tested models of media performance in the social sciences. This is largely due to the combined efforts of a loose group of international scholars as well as an increasing number of students who have produced studies in the US, UK, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, Chinese, German, and Dutch contexts, amongst others. Yet, the PM has also been marginalised in media and communication scholarship, largely due to the fact that the PM"s radical scholarly outlook challenges the liberal and conservative underpinnings of mainstream schools of thought in capitalist democracies. This paper brings together, for the first time, leading scholars to discuss important questions pertaining to the PM"s origins, public relevance, connections to other approaches within Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, applicability in the social media age, as well as impact and influence. The paper aligns with the 30 th anniversary of the PM and the publication of the collected volume, The Propaganda Model Today, and highlights the PM"s continued relevance at a time of unprecedented corporate consolidation of the media, extreme levels of inequality and class conflict as well as emergence of new forms of authoritarianism.

We set up an evolutionary game-theoretic model aimed at addressing the issue of local public good provision via direct commitment of voluntary forces (private donors and nonprofit providers) only. Two classes of agents are assumed to strategically interact within a 'double critical mass' model and we investigate the critical factors affecting the dynamic outcomes of such interaction. Further, we explore the conditions under which (what we term) 'evolutionary crowding-out/in' occurs, depending on agents' degree of opportunism, social comparison and positive selective incentives (such as subsidies given by the government to 'virtuous' citizens or nonprofits only). Adapted from the source document.

The research focuses on financial aspect of infrastructure investment in Vietnam in term of applying public private partnership (PPP) models; especially, value for money (VFM). Firstly, the study describes standard PPP model and explores VFM of this model. Secondly, the research includes experience in public financial innovation in some countries that reach higher VFM of reformed PPP models. Finally, it considers PPP models applied in Vietnam to understand VFM of these models better. This result is basis for Vietnam government to impose suitable policies to guarantee greater VFM in using PPP models. Keywords: value for money, public-private partnership

AbstractIn 2011, the current government announced plans to overhaul the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) programme, renaming it the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway (OPDP). This article questions the government's dedication to continuing, and potentially expanding, a costly and controversial initiative in the face of its apparent failure to treat the offenders in its care effectively and facilitate their progress through the prison system. It suggests that these unfulfilled promises are ancillary to another aim: preventively detaining troublesome prisoners. The plans are of particular concern for prisoners on indeterminate sentences for public protection (IPP), whose release may be further impeded.